FACTS 215 



ported to a third scale still smaller than the cellular scale : 

 there might be intraprotoplasmic sexual phenomena, that 

 is, intraprotoplasmic phenomena in which the intervention 

 of two distinct and complementary elements would be 

 indispensable to assimilation. 



Remark at once that we already have an example of the 

 necessity of two intracellular elements for the elementary 

 life manifested by protozoa. Experiments in merotomy 

 (Chap. XXVII) show that assimilation is produced neither 

 in a cytoplasm deprived of nucleus nor in a nucleus without 

 cytoplasm. 



Suppose that, in certain species of protozoa, there should 

 take place from time to time phenomena such that one cell 

 would be reduced to its cytoplasm and another to its nucleus. 

 Here we should have the two incomplete and complementary 

 elements which would be called sexual. The hypothesis, 

 moreover, is not beyond verification. Max Verworn has 

 succeeded in extracting the nucleus from certain large 

 marine Radiolaria and transplanting them into the cyto- 

 plasm of other individuals of the same species, thus realizing 

 the equivalent of sexual maturation and fecundation. This 

 experiment of Verworn reminds us of an electric pile, from 

 which the zinc would be taken ; it would no longer be an 

 electric pile, for it is that only by the simultaneous presence 

 of the two positive and negative poles. In other words, 

 the pile is a bipolar apparatus ; and so is the living cell 

 since it needs a cytoplasm and a nucleus. 



From the fact that the necessity of cytoplasm and nucleus 

 proves clearly cellular bipolarity, it does not follow that 

 cell elements cannot become incomplete otherwise than 

 by the separation of cytoplasm and nucleus. The electric 

 activity of a pile might be suspended by suppressing, not 

 the zinc, but either the acidulated water or the conducting 



